A selection of ceramics through the ages (5 second delay) Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology
PotWeb: Ceramics online
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People and their collections

Robert Plot 1640-96 - scientist & antiquary
His life and times (Time Line 1: 1600-1659)
Dr Robert Plot's life
Philosophy and science time line
Oxford virtual science walk
National/ local time line

   

1603 death of Elizabeth I.
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    Nov. 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Catholic plot to blow up James I and parliament. Commemorated in Great Britain on Bonfire Night (Nov. 5th ) when a Guy (after Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshire mercenary) was burnt on a bonfire.
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1617 Birth of Elias Ashmole (founder of The Ashmolean Museum).
1611 onwards. Introduction from Italy of the fork for dining. It was not generally included in cutlery sets until the 1660s.
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  9 Apr 1626 Death of Francis Bacon, philosopher. Bacon proposed learning the secrets of nature by organized observations of its regularities. His ideas had a powerful influence on the development of science in 17 th century Europe.
25 Jan 1627 Birth of Robert Boyle, chemist and natural philosopher

1620 English Puritans, persecuted and in exile in Holland, left for the New World.
1625 Charles I came to the throne. He believed in the ‘divine right of kings.Ruled for eleven years from 1629 without a parliament.

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    1630s Slavery introduced in the American plantations
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  29 Aug 1632 Birth of philosopher John Locke (d. 1704) 1637 Earliest recorded date of coffee entering England, being consumed at Balliol College, Oxford
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Dec 1640 Born in Borden parish, near Sittingbourne, Kent 13
Dec 1640 Baptized.		 1640s population of Britain was approximately five million. (It is approx. 60 million today). Population of Oxford c. 10,000 14 Dec 1640 Aphra Behn (d. 1689) spy, first professional woman writer and playwright, baptized near Canterbury, Kent.

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 1641 Birth of Nehemiah Grew, botanist and physician. He was the first to use the term ‘comparative anatomy’. His work influenced Linnaeus. 1642-49 English Civil War between the Royalists (led by Charles I) and the Parliamentarians (led by Oliver Cromwell).  
   4 Jan 1643 Birth of Isaac Newton, scientist and mathematician
1643-5 Witchcraft trials in Suffolk and Somerset.
 
  1643-60 John Wallis (1616-1703), cryptographer for Parliament, Professor of Geometry, University of Oxford, and greatest English mathematician before Newton. 30 Jan 1649 Charles I beheaded in London
1649-59 The Commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of England. Charles II lived in exile in France
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    1650 Anne Green, a servant in Oxford, miscarried in her fourth month through overwork, and was hanged for her crime. She survived the punishment (see Plot 1677 pp197-200)

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    1650 First English coffee house opened, in Oxford
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  1656 Publication of Sir William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire. 8 Nov 1656 Birth of Edmund Halley, astronomer and mathematician. 1650/51 Birth of Nell Gwyn, (d. 1687), orange seller,  actress and favourite mistress of Charles II, pretty, witty Nell, as Pepys described her. W
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24 Mar 1658 Entered Magdalen Hall, University of Oxford 1656-1686 John Aubrey (b.1626, d.1697), antiquary, wrote The Natural History of Wiltshire (pub. 1847). He was the first to  recognize that the earthworks and standing stones at Avebury were a prehistoric temple.  

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Who was he? (biography) Robert Plot : case study Time Line 2: 1660-1679
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last updated: jcm/16-dec-2005